Chapter 37

Roads and bridges within the town

There have been many changes in the names of roads in the town centre and in this summary we travel westwards along the spine of Cockermouth, noting the side roads as we pass.

‘Sanct Elyns Gaitt’ appeared in 1540 (Capella Sancte Elene as early as 1342) and by 1578 we have St. Helen Street. ‘Butts Fold’ on the south of S1. Helen’s Street (Fig. 45) possibly owes its name to the time when crossbow practice was compulsory on holy days, but may mean an awkward and unploughable bit of land, from ‘butt’, the old word for such a piece. The Butts Fold public path was closed by the UDC in 1922 because it was in a bad state and there was no money for its repair, but it has recently been reopened and linked with a new right of way by the old rope walk into Kirkgate square.

‘Kirkgatestreete’, the ‘church road’, derived from the Norse ‘kirkja’ and ‘gata’. ‘Kirkgate’ was once the name not only of the present road but applied also to Skinner Street, Scarwell Brow and the road to Little Mill, the land beyond being Kirkgate Common. Eastwards from Holly Square at the top of the present Kirkgate ran Long Croft, now Windmill Lane, connecting with Waste Lane, Bellbrigg and the very ancient road to Embleton.

‘Ye Merket Place’ of 1578 was sometimes referred to as ‘High Street’ [1] Castlegate was ‘Castle Street’ in 1737 and other early references. All this area of the town was also known as ‘Above Bridge’. Park Lane above the castle, derived from Cockermouth Parks, was changed to Isel Road fairly recently.

‘Below Bridge’ became ‘Main Street’. The yards off Main Street, Market Place and S1. Helen’s Street were usually named after their owners, Birbeck Went originated from Joseph Birbeck and Strickett’s Court from Joseph Strickett, and Wilson’s Court, Bank’s Court and Irving Court are similar examples. A change of owner sometimes led to a change of name. Denton’ s Court derived from Charles Denton about 1800, but later became Herbert’s Court until changed to Allerdale Court some twenty years ago.

Examples still remain of development in the industrial revolution of the late 18th. and early 19th. centuries when several owners of the large Main Street houses built a row of workers’ dwellings down their long burgage plots. Some remain almost unaltered, e.g. Banks Court; others have been developed, such as Cockton’s Yard and the Old King’s Arms Lane; yet others have been demolished, as Lindsay’s Court.

The modern Challoner Street was Chandler Lane in 1775, Globe Went in 1800 and Chaloner Lane or Kitty Went in 1832.’Kitty’ was slang for the lock-up or goal, ‘went’ Middle English for a passageway or path. At the end of Challoner Street was Back Lane or Cross Went, now South Street, the southern limit of the town. This provided a route from the Long Croft area to the west, by-passing the town centre. (Fig. 40).

The bank of the Derwent was for long known as ‘The Sands’, open land at one time also extending ‘above Cocker foot’ along the bank of the Cocker. [2] Waterloo Street was still referred to as ‘on t’Sand’ in 1912. [3] By 1775 development along Sand Went (High Sand Lane) had begun to spread round the corner and by 1832 both sides of Waterloo Street were built up. Property on the south side was often at the foot of the Main Street gardens and in some cases property in the two streets still has the same owner. Wood has on his 1832 map Sand Went, High Sand (Waterloo Street) and Sullard Sand Went (Low Sand Lane, once a way to Graves Mill from Main Street). In 1737 it was Sullerd Sand, in 1785 Sulloth Sand and in 1811 Sulwath Sand Went. [4] The second syllable probably derives from ‘vao’, a ford, presumably the crossing of the beck from the F airfield tarn which crossed Main Street to enter the Derwent here.

On the other side of the main road Sullart (earlier Sullert and Sulwarth) Went led to Back Lane. [5] Sullart Street is shown as Gallowbarrow on a map of 1800. The name appears as ‘Gallabargh’ in 1578, from the OE ‘be(o)rg’ for hill, later modified to ‘barrow’. [6] The way to the gallows on the hill was past the present Highways Depot to Lamplugh Road, Gallowbarrow Brae on the 1863 OS map.

Unfortunately the OS map of 1900 marked this as Sullart Street, from Main Street to the railway, with Gallowbarrow passing Fairfield Schools, since when there has been confusion of the two names. Originally Below Bridge (1775). Street below the Bridge (1840) and Main Street (1832) covered the length from Cocker Bridge to Derwent Bridge, but Crown Street had appeared as the name of the western section by 1863. Crown Street was once known as ‘Scratgate’. [7]

Station Street is a comparatively recent thoroughfare, not opened through until the 1860s and developed by the New Street Company as an approach to the new station. It was originally blocked by buildings along Back Lane (including the General Sunday School). (Fig. 49). In 1875 the editor of the West Cumberland Times was enthusiastic about the noble auction marts, the elegant shops and the new public hall then being built. He gave his opinion that when completed Station Street would be “one of the prettiest streets to be found in any country town”, marred only by an old barn used as a warehouse still standing at the top end. [8] Not all would agree with a later editor’s view of W. H. Smith’s new shop (in 1979 Cumberland House) when due to be opened in 1927

• “It is in the Elizabethan style of architecture which is peculiarly appropriate to an old to\\,l1 like Cockermouth. It is in distinct contrast to the other premises in Station Street, which are of the severe Victorian order.”[9]

When Earl of Egremont, George O’Brien gave land for the New Road to link the top of Castlegate with the tollbar at St. Helen’s. [10] There was an earlier track along this line, from the castle to the bridleway from the top of St. Helen’s Street over Watch Hill to Ise!. In 1866 Askew commented

• “The new road from the top of Castle Street to Sti. Helen’s gate is the chief promenade, being fully three quarters of a mile in length.”

Still known as the New Road in 1912, it is now Castlegate Drive and ‘New Road’ has passed to that which runs from Station Road by the West Cumberland Farmers depot to the Cocker – and formerly to Rubby Banks mill

Main Street once had an appreciable slope, the natural fall of the land towards the Derwent. The footpaths were raised and widened in 1925 and until the 1960s there were stepped kerbs along the wide portion by the Mayo monument. There is a pavement two feet below the present level of the yard behind No. 72 on the north side, [11] showing that the building and paving level has been raised appreciably over the years.

The roadway used to be surfaced with stones from the Derwent, worked down by the cart wheels. In 1874 the local press stressed the need for the footpaths to be flagged, commenting that they were “roomy but gainfully rugged”. The inevitable objection of cost arose – it would cost £96 to flag from Station Street to the statue and rates were already excessive at 2s-2d. However, a start was made on this portion late in 1874.

There were other obstructions in Main Street besides the hiring fairs. The editor of the ‘Times’ wrote in 1874

• “At Cockermouth the corners of our most crowded thoroughfares may be blocked all day long by groups of gaping idlers, without fear of molestation from the guardians of order, while the pavements of Cockermouth are diligently kept free of little girls with skipping ropes. I think our police might properly transfer some of their attention from the little innocents at their hannless play to the lazy loungers at Station Street corner … [he then digresses to point out that as skipping uses all muscles, produces symmetry of form and buoyant healthfulness it should be encouraged.] … But I can find no possible excuse for the idle groups who habitually block our street corners. They are not, artistically speaking, ornamental objects, and am sure the quoins of that excellent hostelry, the Brown Cow, are finn enough without any support of theirs.”

This was the West Cumberland Time’s first year and it was apparently being taken seriously, for a fortnight after the above comments were written four men were in court for obstructing the Main Street footpath at Sullart Street corner and forcing churchgoers on to the road! [12]

Waste Lane and Bellbrigg Lonning, mentioned above, formed a route from the eastern end of the town to Embleton and Lorton. (Fig. 67). Now covered by housing estates, it is difficult to imagine it some 70 years ago when Bolton wrote

• “The present footpath from the Waste Lane to the Windmill Lane goes in just over the beck and winds along the brow overlooking the beck and the orchards, and it strikes the Butts Fold path at right angles. There is no prettier little bit around Cockermouth than this footpath along Bitter Beck when the fruit trees are in blossom and the old hawthorn hedges full of may, but it is terribly neglected by the town’s authorities!” [13]

Waste Lane and Windmill Lane were improved in the 1850s and the latter widened when the new Lorton Road was made. The rockery at the Kirkgate corner was made in 1938 on the site of a demolished building. Also on this side of the town, there was dispute about the maintenance of Simonscales Lane (or Papermill Road) and at an enquiry in 1844 one witness referred to a turning from this road which led steeply down to Simonscales Wath across the Cocker, a route used by carts and pedestrians and across which he had brought lime from Eaglesfield. [14] It required the construction of the A66 to take the macadam surface another third of the way along Simonscales Lane.

The road to the south-west from the town was once Kittyson Lane, now between two sections of the auction mart, which was marked ‘Road to Egremont’ on the 1775 map. There were considerable alterations to the road pattern in this area when the railway was built.

In the first half of the 19th. century ] 5 of the town’s 17 streets and lanes were passable by carriages. A system of street cleaning began as a town concern when the Lord of the Manor appointed a scavenger, possibly in the 17th century, an appointment which was linked with the lease of Little Mill. The task was considerable when sheep, cattle and horses stood in the streets for sale. The dung and refuse was the property of the lord. The scavenger was responsible for the scraping of the streets and the refuse thus collected was left in heaps, sometimes for days, until collected for the lord. Similarly house ordure was sold to farmers and, until rules were laid down for its collection, might lie in the streets for a day or more.

From an early date owners and occupiers had to repair their frontages. In 1689 the Court Leet ruled

• “that every freeholder, tenant and inhabitant within Cockermouth from Cocker Bridge to the head of the town shall before Michaelmas next sufficiently mend their fronts before every one of their doors and so to the middle of the street – one adjoining another by paving of the same, and we do appoint Mr. Rich. Lowry and Mr. Tolson to begin to pave and repair their said fronts accordingly before 21st. March next, and that they the next adjoining shall so pave mend and repair their said fronts accordingly within that time under a penalty of £1-19s-11 ½  d.”

This was a very clear instruction, with a definite time limit, and the highest penalty that the court could impose and recover. Having begun with the east of the town an order was made in 1692 for the rest, so that the whole was completed in 1693. This was followed up the next year by a Court Leet byelaw

“That all the pavement within the borough that hath been lately paved be weekly by every owner thereof and particularly on Saturday nights be made clean sub poena 1s.”

It was a continuous problem to keep the streets free of rubbish and obstruction

• 1677 “It is put in pain that Phillipp Standley remove his stones from the head of Kitty Went sub poena 6s-8d” [According to the church cess list Standley was a freeholder of substance]

• 1689 We order that H. Curwen, Esq., and Mr. Lowthcr or their fanners or tenants do keep clean and weekly cleanse the lane between the King’s highway & the stone bridge at the foot of Church stairs.”

• 1691 “It is put in pain that Thomas France shall not lie any manure in Gallowbarrow sub poena 6s-8d.”

• 1692 “It is put in pain that no butcher or tanner or any other p’son doe lye any beast or sheep skins or any noysome thing which brings dirt or filth thereto under the Town Moote Hall or Stairs sub poena 3s-4d.”

This was not only a problem of the 17th. century. A vestry of 7th August 1856 resolved

• “that a Committee to consist of 12 persons be appointed the Nuisance Removal Committee for Cockermouth to carry into execution the powers of the Nuisance Removal and disease Prevention Acts.” Also “that John Adams be appointed the Sanitary Inspector at a salary of 5 shillings per week from this day for the space of two months, and that he be directed to purchase Lime and whitewash brushes to lend to poor persons to whitewash their houses.”

Whitewashing was not done solely for appearance but to eliminate pests and infection, and incidentally to increase light in houses crowded in narrow courts and yards.

1813 saw a new measure introduced, the “letting to repair the Streets belonging to the Township of Cockermouth for the term of seven years”. Eleven years later the Vestry considered appointing a surveyor and John Benson, the largest landowner in the town and a man with practical knowledge of draining and roadmaking, agreed to be assistant surveyor for a few months without salary. Then in 1826 an assistant surveyor was appointed at a salary of 15s. per week. [15] Road maintenance became more and more important during last century as reflected in the costs of the county council for road and bridge repairs – £465,000 for the whole of the period 1839-75, but up to £29,000 for one year in 1890. [16] By this time the first cars were appearing, some with iron studded wheels to prevent skidding, a device which tore up the surfaces. [17] Council minutes of the early 1900s record three claims by motorists for damage done to their vehicles by tar spraying in Castlegate and in 1912 eight council workmen were paid 5s. each to replace their clogs destroyed in tarring roads. [18]

At the turn of the century more roads were being paved – High Sand Lane and Market Street at about 6d. per yard; Fitz Road, indicating housing development; and in 1925 Main Street reconstructed. Gravel for road work early last century came from Brewery Field, now Kirkbank. The period 1930-5 was one of major road activity, including a consideration of Rubby Banks in 1932, one of a number of occasions when its adoption as a town road has been turned down.

On 28th March 1887 a meeting was held at the Globe to consider planting trees in the town centre. Subscriptions totalling £71-16s. were received and Peter Bum, a nurseryman, was appointed to supply and plant 100 lime trees, to provide soil and manure, and to renew the pavement and fix guards for £45, the iron guards for the young trees to be supplied by W. Robinson of Fairfield ironworks for £32-lOs. [19] They were planted early in November that year. Complaints were made in 1909 that they were over-pruned and from 1920 onwards pruning was left to the discretion of the cemetery curator, at that time Mr. Kirkbride. [20] Cockermouth was very incensed when in 1987 Allerdale D.C. drastically pruned the trees in Main Street, choosing a half-term holiday when the town was full of visitors.

About 1979 the last three of some twelve trees in Station Street were felled, being considered an obstruction to traffic, Recently parking bays have been made and a limited number of trees planted.

The first street lighting was by oil. Then eleven men were appointed as inspectors and in 1834

• “It was resolved that the Inspectors shall be authorised to light the Town with Gas for the next three years for an expense not to exceed the sum of Eighty-four pounds in each year. And that the number of lights shall be not less in number than at present and continue as long lighted.”

At a meeting three years later to consider the amount allowed the inspectors it was

• “resolved that the Town shall be lighted, and that the Gas Company be paid the sum of one hundred and thirty pounds for 62 lamps to be kept lighted until the hour of four 0’clock in the morning for the next three years to commence from this day.” [21]

In 1845 it was decided

“that henceforth during the remainder of the contracts with the Gas Company the Lamps be kept lighted until daylight except during moonlight, and that the rate of fourpence in the pound upon houses and of one penny upon land be now agreed to upon the above conditions.”

The next year they reverted to dusk until four o’clock. [22]

For many years there had been talk of a by-pass for Cockermouth. The main road through the town was taken over as a trunk road, the A66 being extended westwards from Penrith to Workington. This was a help to ratepayers as the increasing volume of industrial traffic passing through the town to and from West Cumberland made maintenance heavy. Trunk road status did not however solve the problem of congestion, especially that of the Castle gate bottleneck where lorries cannot pass one another. The first by-pass scheme was for a route north of the town and we have seen that the position of Walker’s factory was determined by the suggested road line. Largely on economic grounds, especially the cost of overcoming the steep rise east of the Derwent, a southern route was decided upon. A detailed line was fixed by the beginning of 1971. [23] There were objections to the upgrading of a road through the National Park and arguments were put forward for the development of a route using the Carlisle road and passing through Sebergham. A public enquiry was held and the scheme for the present route upheld.

The Cockermouth section, by Tarmac Ltd., was opened without ceremony on 25th June 1976, the length on the Workington side of Fitz Cottage the following spring and the portion eastwards to Braithwaite a little later in June 1977. [24] The route of the old CKP Railway was used for much of the way.

The construction was quite an event in the life of the town. For a time traffic problems were made worse by convoys of lorries passing along Main Street carrying slag from the steel works at Workington to road building east of Cockermouth. Some 400,000 tonnes of material were brought from this source and from quarries and a very much larger quantity moved along the length of the road from cuttings to embankments. [25] The building of the three-span bridge over the Cocker aroused much interest. A caravan village arose on the Lamplugh road and its residents will be remembered by many for the bonfire and firework display to which the town was invited on 5th November 1975, held on the beginnings of the approach to the Cocker bridge on the new road.

The 35 miles ofA66 improvement from near Workington to near Penrith were estimated to cost £30 million. It is interesting to note that in 1931 a by-pass scheme for Keswick was shelved, a road which would then have cost £26,000.

The new roadway has not only benefited West Cumbrian industry and relieved Cockermouth and Keswick of congestion which was reaching breaking point, but it has made Cockermouth accessible to an increasing number of visitors by linking the town by a fast route to the M6 motorway.

A further road development is the Papcastle diversion, built to relieve the congestion at the Derwent Bridge corner, the wear and tear of heavy loads on the bridge and to avoid Gote Brow by connecting the A66 at the Fitz Cottage junction west of the town via a new bridge over the Derwent and a road west of Pap castle and north of Belle Vue to the Carlisle road by the entrance to Wood Hall Begun in December 1989 it was completed in June 1991.

In spite of the by-pass and the link road traffic in the town centre remains heavy. Some alleviation has been provided by the recent making of a mini-roundabout at the Sullart Street corner by Wordsworth House, thus considerably reducing queues in Sullart Street of traffic wishing to enter Main Street or Crown Street. Further changes occurred arising from the arrival of Sainsbury’s supermarket in 2002. The scheme included Station St one-way southwards, traffic lights at the junction of Station St and Lorton Road, and at the top of Gallowbarrow, traffic-calming humps in Gallowbarrow/Sullart St., three pedestrian crossings in Main Street. Initially there were problems especially for delivery lorries finding themselves directed up Lorton St and then trying to come down Kirkgate – damage to the properties exiting onto Market Place occurred on several occasions. There is also now a weight restriction for the town, which means that loaded HGV should not be passing through it unless delivering in town. Disc parking was introduced in September 1991, and in 2004, traffic wardens – appeared under the control of Allerdale Borough Council. Their strict application of the rules with an automatic £30 fine has led to much disgruntlement and many a visitor saying he will never return to the town.

The town has coped well with some Main Street upheavals. The main sewers were laid about 1866. Investigation showed that they were worn out and now needed to be of much greater capacity. They were renewed in 1987-9 and a system of sinking shafts connected by underground tunnels (complete with railways!) ensured minimum interference with surface traffic, The cost was about £2 million. The sewage works were extended in 1986-7 at a further cost of £1.5 million. Another unusual interference with normal town centre life was the filming in 1991 of Melvyn Bragg’s ‘A Time to Dance’, centred on the Midland Bank and the clock-tower former Savings Bank building opposite. In addition to the confusion of visitors when ‘Midland’ occasionally disappeared and became the ‘Cumbria Bank’, the town was concerned that Main Street was emptied for filming, with the result that in the final product Cockermouth appeared deserted.

Fitz cottage, demolished when the new A66 was constructed, was the toll house west of the town. Another turnpike cottage also demolished was at the foot of Gote Brow. East of the town the gate at Town Head in St. Helen’s Street was later moved out to the junction of the Higham and Embleton roads and became St. Helen’s Gate, while that which stood in Kirkgate by the Friends’ Meeting House was moved out to just on the town side of Rose Lane on the Lorton road, retaining the name Kirkgate.

At a town meeting in October 1975 [26] twenty footpaths within the town boundary were listed. Some fifteen additions to the definitive footpath map of routes regularly used by the public were suggested. Concern was expressed about the loss of use of three former rights of way. Until the building of Fairfield Junior School there had been three gates into and two paths across the Fairfield. The right of the Urban District Council to have sold the land was challenged

• “It was never theirs to sell. It was always used as a public drying place and as a playing field. There were gates at each end of the path, which were never locked and it was used by the public as their right for as long as anyone can remember.” [27]

The gates had been locked at one time. In 1905 the gate on to Kittyson Lonning was opened and locked by the park keeper as he went to and from the park and another gate into the field was locked at 5.30 on weekdays and 1.00 on Saturday. [28] One Fairfield path is about to be restored, from the car park through the school grounds on to Sullart Street.

A second loss was the right of way from Tweedmill Lane past the remaining buildings of the tweed mill and under the railway bridge to link with the riverside path. There are varying theories as to when this path was closed. As far back as 1901 the UDC decided there was no right of way and when seven years later an approach was made to them by the Cockermouth Visitors’ Association they upheld that decision. [29]

Thirdly, it was once possible to walk along much of the town bank of the Derwent, a bank much widened now by gravel from dredging. This new land has been appropriated and fenced by some property owners. The possibility of reopening this path is being investigated.

Another lost right of way went from Quaker Bridge below Croft Mill to the archway under the Midland Bank. The bank erected a gate which they sometimes locked, then it remained locked and the route was permanently closed. [30]

In the 1970s the Civic Trust considered the opening of a right-of-way along the former railway track from the eastern end of the cemetery to Fitz Cottage (now the junction of Low Road and the Papcastle link road), where there was a triangle of land by the river suitable for a picnic area. Unfortunately the Trust failed to make any progress with British Rail. Responsibility for road bridges over the track was a major problem. Then in 1990 came hope when the projected path appeared in the South Allerdale Plan. With the involvement of the authorities came power, money and expertise. The West Cumbria Groundwork Trust was asked to make a feasibility study and following this, with their own staff and the help of volunteers, they had by 1994 produced the Cockermouth Greenway. This is a high-grade walkway and cycleway, with several access points and provision for wheelchairs and prams. An outstanding feature is the railway viaduct over the Cocker, the views up and down the river now opened up, where before the bridge walls were too high to see over, and with two mosaics depicting life in Cockermouth. Unfortunately the development of Lloyds Motors on the Low Road curtailed the western end, but the existing length is much used, both for pleasure and for shorter and traffic-free access to the town from surrounding housing estates.

As we turn to a consideration of the bridges in the town we may note first two very simple ones on the approaches to the church. Skitter Beck (so named from the Old Norse for filth, ‘skit’, and later renamed Bitter Beck) was still an open stream in 1775. [31] Until early last century the beck was forded at the lower end of Kirkgate, the road being very narrow and much lower than at present. Pedestrians used a wooden footbridge continued as a raised causeway as far as the church gate. [32]

This was repairable by the Vestry, as witness a minute of 1744

• “We, the Surveyors of the Highways and vestry now present, do agree that the street called the Causeway and Kirkgate be paved.”

The other crossing of the beck which led to the church was a footbridge at the bottom of the Church Steps, later buried beneath Church Brow. Market Street, leading to the Brow, was sometimes known as Church Street. Both crossings were frequently referred to in vestry minutes.

Not until 1879 did Cumberland appoint its first road surveyor. In 1881 he took over the county bridge roads (the 100 yard stretches) and by 1887 had also taken responsibility for most of the bridges, so that highways and bridges at last came under one control.

The 1832 map shows the Kirkgate end of the length of bee-x from here to the Cocker culverted and by the tithe map of 1840 it was covered all the way to the river. Responsibility for bridges was increasingly taken over by the county, roads and minor bridges being left with the towns and parishes. In 1665 the county had 32, including Derwent, Cocker, Ouse, Isel, Deepe (Scale Hill) and Lorton in this area. The number rose to 141 public bridges by 1753 [33] The ‘undertaker’, later the bridgemaster, was responsible for the bridge and 100 yards of roadway on each side. As wheeled traffic increased their maintenance became more important and the King’s Bench Court ruled in 1795 that they should be made wide enough for carriages to use them.

Cocker Bridge was rebuilt in 1828, at a cost of £2,600 which included the expense of removing houses to widen the approaches. The old bridge was about 15 feet wide with low parapets and so steeply humped that it was possible to build the present one underneath it. When ready for completion by the insertion of the key stone the Cocker rose and brought down the new masonry, but after a further attempt the bridge was completed and the old one on top blown up to remove it.

• “Samuel Fletcher, landlord of the White Ox, father to the present Mrs. Rowlands, of the Spur Inn, was the last foot passenger.” [34]

John Bolton relates that his father had seen the mail coach cross the Cocker at Cass Bay, the wath at the foot of Cocker Went or Cass Bay Brow where Quaker Bridge was later erected. It may have been during the rebuilding of Cocker Bridge that the mail used this route. ‘Cass Bay’ is a term applied to the whole of this stretch of river, which possibly originated in the widening at the ford by the water extending up the slopes, especially into South Street.

The footbridge which replaced this crossing, known variously as Cocker Lane Footbridge, Jubilee Footbridge, but usually now as Quaker Bridge, was opened on 21st June 1887, Jubilee Day, less than three weeks after the laying of the foundation stone on 2nd June. The cost was £129-6s-3d. [35] -Josiah Hall, one of the Quakers largely responsible for the bridge, opened it immediately after the laying of the foundation stone of Victoria Bridge, pointing out that the Local Board had turned down the plans two years earlier but had since changed that decision. The bridge was replaced by the existing new one in 1984.

The ford at this point was only closed in the 1930s. When the council first proposed this there was some opposition, but a request from 12 residents in nearby property that it be closed for safety resulted in it being fenced off. [36]

The Victoria Jubilee Bridge just mentioned provided a much needed access to the station and the auction mart from across the river without having to use the narrow lower end of Kirkgate and the congested area of Market Place and Cocker Bridge, although traders in those areas objected to the opening up of the new route. [37] A public meeting in the Court House, resulting from a letter in the West Cumberland Times, decided to proceed with the scheme at an estimated cost of £1,130. The actual cost was higher than this figure. The foundation stone was laid by Mrs. Waugh, using the customary silver trowel, and Jubilee coins of 2s-6d., Is. and 6d. were placed in a cavity. [38] The bridge was built by Lister, McCartney and Lister of Cockermouth.

Still further up the Cocker, a footbridge crossed the river from Rubby Banks Mill. This was a private bridge which gave access to the mill’s tenter field. It was also used by golfers going to the course which existed on the eastern side of the river before the Embleton course was opened.

On 29th March 1973 Councillor Roy Potts, chairman of the UDC, opened Double Mills footbridge, [39] a graceful and much-used link between the two sides of the Cocker. The UDC had considered a bridge in the neighbourhood of Rubby Banks in 1946 and the Cockermouth and District Angling Association asked for one as far back as 1922. This £20,000 structure carries water, power and sewerage services to the new estates, gives access to the housing developments east of the river, enables those on the west to use the riverside path to Lorton and links the two sections of Harris Park.

At the foot of the Cocker the first Waterloo Bridge was opened on 18th June 1887, the 72nd. anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Early maps show roads leading down to the river on both sides at this point, so there was presumably a wath or ford. This structure, costing £288, most of which was subscribed by the Castle Brewery, was strong and plain, a utilitarian erection enabling commerce to cross from one side to the other – barrels from the cooper in High Sand Lane to the brewery (hence the popular name • Barrel Bridge’) and later the buses from the County Garage on the Castle side to and from their loading points in Main Street. Lister, McCartney and Lister again did the masonry and W. and J. Herbert, whose foundry adjoined the site, the ironwork. The bridge was opened by Mrs. Mitchell from a carriage standing in the middle of the bridge. This new link, one of three Cocker bridges started or completed in 1887, was a help to trade in this area and a benefit to many of the 70 men who worked on the castle side of the river. [40] The stanchions of the bridge had brewery barrels in relief on them. In 1896 the bridge was severely damaged by floods, but the brewery paid for repairs and strengthening done by Herberts. [41] In 1918 floods brought down a tree which broke the brewery end and repairs took a year. During floods at August Bank Holiday weekend in 1938 a tree lodged against the centre support of the bridge and debris and flood water built up until most of it was carried away. The remains of the central support may be seen when the river is low. The tender of Dorman Long of Middlesborough to demolish the remains and erect a new bridge for £2325 was accepted in August 1939, [42] but the outbreak of war prevented rebuilding. After a long interval the present narrower footbridge was opened by the head boy of Derwent School in April 1963. The Cumberland Engineering Company of Whitehaven cleared the old remains, put in new stone abutments and erected the bridge. This was completed on a Friday. During the weekend the Cocker washed the supports away. Consequently the stonework on each side was raised another 18 inches and the bridge, retrieved from the river, re-erected at a higher level. [43]

Travelling down the Derwent, a metal footbridge of two arches covering 195 feet, opened in 1875, was solely for the use of Harris’s employees, but it became a route much used by the general public. It was renewed in 1981.Lastly, Derwent Bridge is one of the two oldest in the town. Preceded probably by a Roman bridge below Papcastle, it is not known how many have been built on this site; possibly four, for there was one in the 14th. century. The immediate predecessor of the present bridge was only some 10 or 12 feet wide. [44] Probably there was an earlier one of pack horse type, too narrow for wheeled vehicles. When the river is very low old foundations and wooden stakes may be seen. In about 1822 the two-arch bridge was erected at a cost of £3,000 [45] and when the river was cleared of gravel in 1936 to lessen the risk of flooding in the Gote area the chance was taken to increase the flow under the bridge by building three square arches to take flood water at the north end. Ironically the town had a serious flood two years later, but conditions in the Gote were better than they would have been before 1936. [46]

Two aspects of traffic control in the town persist. The town now has pedestrian crossings( first considered by the UDC in 1934 and deferred ) – usually very well observed by motorists, and traffic lights. Complaints are heard regarding parking difficulties and car park charges, but 60 years ago, when there were no car parks, it was suggested that there should be no street parking at all, that Fairfield should be used and that a charge be made of Is (5p). There was immediate reaction – Market days only, short stops to be allowed in the streets, etc. [47]

A feature of the town plan prepared by Johnston and Wright was the construction of a relief road within the town to run southwards from Derwent Bridge and curve round using the old railway line to the top of Station Road, thence by the existing Lorton Street and Victoria Road to the top of Kirkgate from where a new road would follow a route behind the Quaker Meeting House and across St. Helen’s Street to some way up Castle gate Drive. Main Street would be closed to traffic near its western end and Castlegate would become a pedestrian way. Nothing has been done to implement this plan.